SOMETIMES I AM SPEECHLESS

Almost mirror finished bowls for Freeacre for Christmas present.

from Murph
SOMETIMES I AM SPEECHLESS

The last post by Freeacre has generated a plethora of comments that got my attention. Ok, ok, Freeacre has been taking up the slack in writing posts lately. I have been speechless lately at what I am reading and experiencing to the point of wondering what words can possibly comment on the goings on in this world and this nation, and, at the local level of government.

We got a copy of the revised edition of Charles Smith’s “Survival +” book in hopes that could shed some more light on the observable crazy shit that is happening. It does help, and is an excellent book for an analysis on what is transpiring in the economic world and how it affecting people and societies. But it does not explain a lot of the craziness I am reading about. I had downloaded his first book when it was available for downloading, went through it, and it is excellent all by itself. I haven’t gotten through the “Survival +” updated book yet. Next on the list.

Not leaving me speechless, this is worth a hoot from ‘The Onion’ if you haven’t seen it..
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_dont_even_want_to_be_alive

For instance, dig this little tidbit;
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/bush-hunters-convention/
Now is this article pointing out crazy shit or what? This penchant to hang dead animal parts on a wall is something I just don’t understand. I am impressed with their drive to kill every living thing out there, except themselves I suppose, and then brag about it. Unless of course it is Cheney and a lawyer. Uggg. Lawyer parts on a wall?

By now we have all heard about Pfat Roberthem and his ‘god is responsible for Haiti’. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/pat-robertson-haiti-curse_n_422099.html Line feed says; “Haiti cursed by pact with devil”.

Our local county government is pushing to let developers put up more destination resorts in the county. Now does that make sense? The country is in a depression and they want more expensive resort areas built? IMO its pure craziness.

Ok, here is another;
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/Avatar.Balcer.negative.2.1412100.html
This is one of the articles slamming “Avatar” movie. Notice the reasons for putting it down. Good lord, it’s even anti Christian.

This one may be a bit of a stretch for speechlessness and craziness, but I am sure you have seen this one.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/75119-irs-commissioner-doesnt-file-his-own-taxes

For those that are curious about conspiracy theories and how they are debunked, dig this
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 The entire paper has a download link at the site. Interesting reading.

I presuppose that all of you are familiar with the new Supreme Court decision lifting any restrictions on what corporations can buy in the political bull shit arena. Now this is scary in my opinion. We thought we had the best government money could buy? Now it is going to be up to the highest bidder for sure, foreign and domestic. Want to make a lot of money, go into politics. This bit of news literally leaves me speechless. They also lifted the limit of individual political donations. All this in the category of free speech. We are doomed, I tell you, doomed!

Joe Bageant has a real rant focused on a letter to him from Jan 24th. I get the feeling that he is sick and tired of people writing him bull shit.

I went to the feed store a few days ago to pick up some rabbit food and got in a conversation with the owners wife. Turns out she gets the majority of her ‘news’ from the morning “700 Club” show on TV. She expressed the opinion that Obama had rescinded almost all of Bushe’s advancements in the government. I asked her to tell me what these were. She couldn’t. I said he hadn’t repealed the Patriot Act and she thought that was good. I asked if she meant the restriction on our freedoms. She said that was a good thing for national security and to catch the people that want us all to die. Sigh. I was able to restrain myself and not laugh at her. I told here I would rather have my freedoms, thank you. Come to find out I ran across some other people that also listen to the 700 Club. Talk about a disinformation move by the evangelical churches.

We recently got a copy of Mike Rupperts new book “Confronting Collapse” that put all of his conclusion and a lot of his data together into a rather precise analysis. Some new stuff in the book that is interesting. Worth the read.

I’m about half way through James Wesley Rawles book “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It”. He is the guy that started http://survivalblog.com/ that indeed has a lot of useful information. His listing of what we need to survival is downright daunting and would take a millionaire to supply, but the listing is very interesting about what he conceives we should be working toward and why.

Since it is getting close to seed starting for the garden, we have made our seed order and gotten some of them already. I have been pouring through loaned books from friends on multiple ideas for growing food locally.

I’ve finally finished the jobs in the shop/garage that demanded I keep it heated. Burned up over a cord of wood doing them. At current prices for pine burning wood ($150/cord, split) it was reasonably expensive projects. Freeacre had a couple of myrtle wood bowls with beautiful graining that had gotten a bit beat up over the years. I had decided I would do a mirror finish on the two of them for Xmas presents while I was also doing a mirror finish on a rifle stock for a guy. After Freeacre informed me that we didn’t have anyplace to display mirror finished large bowls and was going to use them, I quit short of an absolute mirror finish after 8 weeks of working on them. I’ve found that mirror finishes are really difficult to do, even with practice over the years. To complicate it, I did them in tung oil. At least I’m now freed up to work on some other projects I have in mind, especially ones that don’t involve fancy finishes until we get to the planting stage in the weather.

I can’t tell you of the number of retired folks I am acquainted with that express boredom since they don’t have a regular job to go to anymore. Bored? Hmmm, how is that even possible? I guess TV and jawing with friends must constitute most of their time wasting. We can’t seem to generate enough time to do what we want to get done. Talked to an older retired guy at the Grange meeting. He expressed that his garden was all set to go. I blinked. It is winter in Oregon after all. Upon questioning him, seems he was referring to his decorative garden and planting of bushes and flowers, etc. When I expressed my thought that he was referring to a vegetable garden he laughed and said he doesn’t do vegetable gardens, too damned much work. I said that when and if the trucks stopped running or the grocery store got too high priced the vegetable garden that was too much work would suddenly be valuable. We quit talking about it about then. People standing around nodded in agreement.

People at this site have periodically expressed how hard it is to talk to people about the coming bad times, the being treated with contempt/disbelief/skepticism etc. And yet, in this area, rural Oregon, there is a surprising number of people that also believe it’s not going to get better any time soon. Difference in opinion of how it will play out and how bad it will get, but not with a whole lot of optimism. Then of course there is the ultra right people that blame everything on those damned ultra left liberals and figure if we can get Sarah Palin elected everything will go back to normal. I don’t indulge much anymore in conversations that start out that way. They are stuck in a political ideology and aren’t about to listen to a counter opinion and data. After all, I do listen to what they have to say, but if I contradict anything, their voices gain considerably in volume and they begin to wave their arms and would prefer I just shut up. Critical thinking seems to be a lost skill in the general population.

Now that this rant is finished, I can become speechless again.

Despite Efforts, Population Getting Worse

Photo courtesy of Hot Springs Wizard. Honoring the landscape with a hand-made head on what he calls, "The Rock of Knowledge"

Happily, our friend from Belgium (AKA Spirit Across the Sea) has contributed a post to give us another starting place for the on-going conversation...

Attempts to Solve the Population Problem Only Make Matters Worse

Over population is one of those proverbial elephants in the living room that nobody wants to talk about, mainly because it is easier to ignore an insoluble problem than attempt to deal with it. Thomas Malthus essentially said that population would continue to grow until it ran out of food. He used different words but that is what he meant. The problem is that there is no way you can stop turkeys from having little turkeys or any other species including humans from having offspring. They have been doing it since pre-history and regard it as an inalienable right but this inalienable right has caused a problem. It doesn’t matter whether you blame it on the age of oil or any other reason it is a fact that there has been a mushroom cloud of people on the planet in the last hundred years and the Malthus train is headed at full speed towards the buffers. The world population is expected to reach seven billion by 2012. At a current population level of almost 1.4 billion, which is a mere billion more than the population of the USA and 20% of all humans on Earth, the Chinese saw the problem coming, switched the points at the last moment and sat back to watch the train head for the cliffs.

China Set to Abandon its Failing Population Policy

It is fairly obvious that if two parents have two children during their lifetime the children replace the adults and if these children replace themselves on a one to one basis then the population remains stable. If they have more than two children then the population increases and if they have less than two it decreases. In an attempt to decrease its population China did just that. From the mid 1970’s it limited each female to just one child during her lifetime so that the population would halve over one generation. The experiment was a partial success, which means it didn’t work or more correctly it worked but not in the way intended. It is true that this policy has prevented the population jumping by an estimated 400 million but it has also resulted in unforeseen social problems which are now preoccupying the regime. Normally children are born in roughly equal numbers of males to females. Nature skews this slightly in favour of males since generally they do more dangerous things like fighting in wars for instance. Proportions vary throughout the world with ‘normal’ being about 103 males for every 100 females but in isolated groups can be as high as 107 males to 100 females (jargon shorthand for this is a ‘ratio of 1.03’ or a ‘ratio of 1.07’). Currently China is approaching a ratio of 1.21 resulting in 33.31 million more men than women being born during the twenty years between 1980 and 2000 (and of course more since). This short post is actually about gender imbalance rather population per se. There are at least 33.3 million men roaming around China that can’t find women, many living a new phenomenon called bachelor villages, resulting in male depression; an increasing sex industry and crimes against females. It is so much of a problem that in the two years between 2001 – 2003 police freed 45,000 abducted women and children and these are just the ones they found. There is also a disproportionate aging population with too few working age people to support both the elderly and the state structure.

Since the time of Mao, China has dragged itself into the industrial age but old habits die hard and its mentality is still largely peasantry. The country is not known for its human rights or its social (welfare) policies. When the elderly become too old to work it is traditionally for the offspring to continue the pastoral life in the same locality and provide for the parents. In this way strong family bonds are maintained. Now with migration of the young into the new industrial areas combined with the one child policy, the elderly have become vulnerable in a way previously unknown. Previously, sons took over father’s duties in the fields and lived in the family home or nearby to care and provide for the parents. Daughters married and went to live with her husband or in the home of his parents. Thus it was mainly the sons and their wives who cared for the parents. In a way, sons represented their pension policy. Now with the one child policy that safety net has been lost especially if the son is enticed into the new industrial areas which could be a couple of days train journey away. If parents have a daughter they are even worse off since it is almost certain she will be lost to them during their working lifetime with no one to carry on the family line or provide for them in old age. Not only this, the daughter’s family has to provide a dowry on her marriage yet it is the bridegrooms family that receive care from her in later life. A growing market within China for affordable ultrasound scanners has allowed many parents to ‘choose’ for sons with illegal selective pro-choice abortions becoming an increasing fact of life. If this fails or the woman ‘chooses’ too late, then incidences of infanticide of daughters are reported to be drastically increasing. The administration now realizes it got a few details wrong and that even the plans of an authoritarian regime can be sidetracked by the will of the people. It is now expected that there will be proposals in the next five year plan (2011 – 2016) to drop or at least shelve the one child policy to replace it with a sliding scale policy where the one child per female law will remain in the main cities; two children per female in the designated countryside and three in areas like Tibet for instance where gender ratios are within normal world wide limits. It is suggested that this will be combined with some sort of welfare plan which favours girls. Proposed measures include exempting girls’ families from contributing towards school fees; parents with two daughters would also receive the equivalent of $150 pa for the rest of their lives (this is a lot in China); preferential health care treatment together with modern housing and secure employment. A care package for the elderly would also be provided. There are three foreseeable problems with this; firstly this break with existing policy would seriously conflict with China's population control effort; secondly there are not enough working people to pay for it and finally export revenue may get caught in the dollar’s demise.

Mainland Chinese have more in common with the Yanomamo People than with the inhabitants of Hong Kong

The above is just a knee jerk reaction of the people to an ill thought through policy by an authoritarian regime – and it couldn’t happen anywhere else, right? Well, No!
The Yanomamo are a tribal people who inhabit Venezuela’s jungle region along its southern border with Brazil. There are about 15,000 of them living in 150 or so scattered villages. If you accept the initial premise that they are often attacked by their neighbouring villages, then their solution to this can only be described as bizarre logic. But before that, some interesting numbers. Villages of forty members or less cannot survive since there are too few men to defend it. At numbers of 100 – 125 inhabitants, there is constant squabbling about policy and at a level of 150 inhabitants it becomes totally unworkable as a cohesive unit and splits into two. Bear with me for a few seconds because I am going to run the argument backwards and then the reason for the attacks will become clear. The villages are attacked so the attacked village needs a strong force of men to defend it and because of this the attacking side needs a strong force of men to prevail in their mission. In order to get a sufficient proportion of warriors it is customary for separate communities to practice infanticide against females. This leaves a disproportionate number of men and the reason for inter village conflict is to steal women from their neighbours. If they only had the wit to stop with the infanticide then there would be enough women to go around without any need for fighting at all. Maybe the whole thing is nature’s way of sharpening their survival skills.

Well that is all fine or not, depending on whether you are one of the victors or the vanquished and we can see the disproportionate numbers of males and therefore the connection with the mainland Chinese but what has all this got to do with the people of Hong Kong. Well it seems that the men of Hong Kong just don’t like very much to marry the ladies of Hong Kong and go on more of a poaching rather than raiding mission to the mainland. The reasons for this are not at all clear but it just is so. Perhaps city slicker males don’t like to marry city slicker ladies and go off to find mainland maidens. This leaves a more than an average number of local ladies on the island - for those of you who are interested in knowing this fact.

Imbalance Redressed?

Now that the ladies of Hong Kong have entered the conversation, is there anywhere else in the world that has a surfeit of women? Well it just so happens there is but I am not at all sure the surplus men of China would want to head there in droves. It is in Greenland and the Arctic waste territories; the peoples who are collectively known as Eskimos. The reason is not reverse infanticide but all the same, I am sure it is not one you are going to want to know about. Their diet consists entirely of fish and other sea life, seals, walrus etc and these species over the years have absorbed much of the toxic waste our civilisation has dumped into the sea – DDT, PCB’s mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals. These chemicals affect hormones and endocrines in pregnant women in a way that favours the formation of a female fetus. So next time you see an Eskimo woman smiling in your direction, just remember that she might be a sack of toxic waste.

Conclusion

It seems to me that when you set about deliberately meddling with the primordial forces of nature then nature has ways if biting back and although they might not always be conventional, they are always effective.

Sources

Rolic News – Chinese syndicated newspaper Dec 2009
Experts urge switch from one child policy

Human Sex ratio – Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

MSNBC.com
NBC: China begins to face sex-ratio imbalance
http://www.nsmbc.msn/id/5953508/print/1/displaymode/1098/

National Geographic Magazine August 1976 pp211
Yanomamo, the True People
(Borrowed from the doctor’s waiting room)

"Year of the Bad Serf"

photo courtesy of Hot Springs Wizard

by freeacre


“In the face of expensive wars and a dying desperate federal state, 2010 will mark the year that Americans self-consciously embrace the power of civil disobedience, and launch a decade of fundamental and good-natured repudiation of all things government – its wars, its debts, its never-ending lies and yes, even its promises. It’s already happening, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.” That’s a quote from an essay (“Year of the Bad Serf”) by Karen Kwiawatowsky on LewRockwell.com that got my attention.

Humm….rebellious fun. Yeah, fun would be good. People who are familiar with me already know that I tend to favor the adolescent responses of immature name-calling and vulgar gestures as my first response to adversity or bogus authority. I consider it my survival response to a rather objectionable childhood that has served me quite well. If nothing else, it helps to disconnect me from knee-jerk subservience or fear while giving me time to think of a more effective retaliation. Some people might say that I have an “anger racket” and that it is not good for my health. But, you know, I just tell them to "bite me."

When George Bush was the president and we were writing on cyclone’s site, I used to keep a handy list of insulting labels when referring to the assorted miscreants in his abysmal administration. Since then, my list has been lost. But, it may be time to make up another one to keep handy when firing off a quick letter to the lamestream media talking heads or to one or the other of the political or financial wizards responsible for the unfolding debacle in Washington and Wall Street. To that end, I am beginning a new list. Feel free to use it yourselves or to add to it. Collectively, we could create a compendium of choice appellations that would be both convenient and emotionally satisfying to use. Let’s see…

There are some restrictions to insults these days. You can’t call a Republican “retarded” anymore, for instance. It would be an insult to the, um, mentally challenged among us. And, you really can’t exclude the females from the mix, either, since women seem to have broken the barriers and become equally as despicable as the men. So, “scum bag” can be gender-balanced with “scum queen,” for instance. Sometimes one needs some extra verbal ammunition to heap justifiable scorn on those who so richly deserve it. So, hauling out the trusty thesaurus,

Nouns Adverbs & Adjectives

Abomination (something
that is sick and wrong) abhorrent (loathsome, abysmal detestable, disgusting, wretched)

Accomplice (partner-in- Addled (befuddled)
crime, abettor, henchman) bovine (stupid, cow-like)
Bankster (thief, robber, crook) (fake, phony, fraudulent)
Brain trust (PTB)
Dumbass dumbassed (also works as adjective)
Fraudster (see: bankster) fetid (foul, rank, rancid)
Hack (trite, banal, inane, heinous (evil, wicked, atrocious)
lamestream journalist) hideous (monstrous, appalling)
lout (dolt, oaf, idiot)
minion (lackey, servant)
miscreant (criminal, villain, Malicious (misanthropic, malignant)
see: carl rove)
Nozzle (I just like it)
numbnut (numbskull, nitwit) nefarious (heinous, detestable)
nut, nutjob (fruitcake, flake)
Overlord (ruling class asshole) Obnoxious (odious, revolting)
Peasant (serf, wage slave) pernicious (destructive, harmful)
Pinhead (butthead) pathetic
Pimp (whore, pl.,congress) perverse
Rapacious (plundering, savage)
Reprobate (evil-doer) relentless (persistent, cruel)
Scum (loathsome as in
yuppie scum, or scum queen)
Suit (minion of overlords)shameful (despicable, contemptible)
Shyster (unethical lawyer)
Shit (turd, piece of…) shit (… for brains)
Tool (toady)

I like alliteration. It adds color and emphasis to a description. So, one can combine adjectives and nouns with the same first sound, and it becomes a colorful term: shameful shyster; pathetic pinhead; nattering nozzle; malignant miscreant; heinous hack; bogus brain trust, etc.

Well, those are my favorites. There are so many more wonderful taunts and insulting terms with which to season your letters to the editor, your congressional representative, your local financial analyst, or comment on a blog site. Consider it art. Consider it therapy. This is my own little step toward making it perhaps somewhat quicker or easier to heap one’s dissatisfaction with the way things are to those who richly deserve it.

Later, if the system still holds, we could examine entertaining ways we can demonstrate our dissatisfaction in real terms, like stuffing a “postage paid” envelope to our credit card company with the cut up bank card with a half pound of junk mail; or, walking merrily away from your upside-down mortgage or unsecured credit card. Thinking of creative bumper stickers we can put up all over, like “No Incumbents!” when it’s time to vote. Let’s think on it… Acts of civil disobedience will probably be called for. We can attempt to do rebellious acts that are fun street theater that makes a point without inviting being hammered by the powers that be.

I guess the point of all this is to keep our spirits up while dealing with the relentless slide that seems to move at a glacial pace, and win some hearts and minds along the way. Naturally, if some big crisis or disaster suddenly happens, forget it, and duck and cover. There are many things to keep our eyeballs on right now. I’m sure that we will be keeping each other apprised through our comments. Until then,

Cheers!

2010 - We Can Do This

Feeding the birds

by freeacre


Good grief. Several of my “go to” writers have published their dire predictions for 2010. From James Howard Kunstler in this week’s Clusterfuck Nation, first, he rather colorfully summed up 2009 this way:

“2009 was the Year of the Zombie. The system for capital formation and allocation basically died but there was no funeral. A great national voodoo spell has kept the banks and related entities like Fannie Mae and the dead insurance giant AIG lurching around the graveyard with arms outstretched and yellowed eyes bugged out, howling for fresh infusions of blood... er, bailout cash, which is delivered in truckloads by the Federal Reserve, which is itself a zombie in the sense that it is probably insolvent. The government and the banks (including the Fed) have been playing very complicated games with each other, and the public, trying to pretend that they can all still function, shifting and shuffling losses, cooking their books, hiding losses, and doing everything possible to detach the relation of "money" to the reality of productive activity.
But nothing has been fixed, not even a little. Nothing has been enforced. No one has been held responsible for massive fraud. The underlying reality is that we are a much less affluent society than we pretend to be, or, to put it bluntly, that we are functionally bankrupt at every level: household, corporate enterprise, and government (all levels of that, too.)”
Well put, I’d say. Then he goes on to surmise what may happen next year in terms of continued bailouts, peak oil, and the continuation of failed policies. He thinks the heightened misery index will not be well received by the citizenry.
“… One wild card is how angry the American people might get. Unlike the 1930s, we are no longer a nation who call each other "Mister" and "Ma'am," where even the down-and-out wear neckties and speak a discernible variant of regular English, where hoboes say "thank you," and where, in short, there is something like a common culture of shared values. We're a nation of thugs and louts with flames tattooed on our necks, who call each other "motherfucker" and are skilled only in playing video games based on mass murder. The masses of Roosevelt's time were coming off decades of programmed, regimented work, where people showed up in well-run factories and schools and pretty much behaved themselves. In my view, that's one of the reasons that the US didn't explode in political violence during the Great Depression of the 1930s - the discipline and fortitude of the citizenry. The sheer weight of demoralization now is so titanic that it is very hard to imagine the people of the USA pulling together for anything beyond the most superficial ceremonies - placing teddy bears on a crash site. And forget about discipline and fortitude in a nation of ADD victims and self-esteem seekers.
I believe we will see the outbreak of civil disturbance at many levels in 2010. One will be plain old crime against property and persons, especially where the sense of community is flimsy-to-nonexistent, and that includes most of suburban America. The automobile is a fabulous aid to crime. People can commit crimes in Skokie and be back home in Racine before supper (if supper is anything besides a pepperoni stick and some Hostess Ho-Hos in the car). Fewer police will be on guard due to budget shortfalls.
I think we'll see a variety-pack of political disturbance led first by people who are just plain pissed off at government and corporations and seek to damage property belonging to these entities.”
The Survival Acres Newsletter contains a very dark scenario that begins in 2010, but includes an over-all view of the coming decade and beyond. It is not pretty:
“The next decade will see catastrophic changes of such scale and
magnitude, that this decade of human history will forever be
remembered as "the time of troubles". There will be little parallel
in past human history for comparison in scale, scope, size and
significance except the decade following this one which portends to
be even worse.

Many of us will probably be dead by 2020. This will be primarily the
result of the following factors: internal strife, war, disease,
plague, famine and extreme religious fundamentalism and widespread
violence. These events will begin immediately -- starting in 2010 and
continuing for through the following decade.

Root causes of these factors will be energy collapse, environmental
collapse, resource collapse and financial collapse affecting every
country of the world in the decade ahead. These are the collapsing
dominoes that underpin our entire civilization. All have been widely
abused and depleted even now, the next decade will see them falter
further and undergo full-scale collapse.”

He goes on to imagine worse and worse consequences of our collective mistakes, a sampling of which I quote here:

”… Entire countries will be abandoned to their own devices for their
survival as nations desperately hoard increasingly critical resources
for themselves. Primarily water and food will be the resource needed
most as the climate continues to spiral wildly from the norm and crops
collapse all over the world. But energy resources will be in
increasingly short supply and will precipitate the collapse of entire
economies.

2012 will be early and especially worrisome, as cultish behavior
among various groups and individuals replaces common sense in the
run-up to December 21st. Rage and riots will be replaced with despair
when prophecy proves false. Suicides will be at an all-time high among
easily influenced groups and people.

Hysteria within government, media, celebrities and pundits will
create a frenzy of hatred and froth towards groups, governments and
even individuals deemed 'responsible' for the growing crisis’s around
the world. In America, this hysteria will even achieve federal status
of protection, as lawmakers "protect" the practice of hatred and
xenophobia. Other countries will follow, believing themselves to be
under attack from within. Symptomatic responses will be the earmark
of this decade.

Politicians of all flavors will find it increasingly dangerous to
remain in office and more then a few will be forcibly removed and
assassinated. Political campaigns will resemble military conquest and
domination as contenders "vie" for the prize they seek, armed to the
teeth from the very people they claim to support. "Voting" will
become a highly manipulated and controlled affair, as increasing
privacy restrictions make simply being a citizen an unending
application process.

Privacy and rights will be completely gone by the end of the decade,
as fascist polices are layered higher and higher. Travel, purchasing,
possession and even ownership will become increasingly restricted and
controlled. The Internet will have been absorbed entirely into a
Total Information Awareness network whereby all activities, browsing,
buying and shopping will be highly controlled and manipulated. The
free press will cease to exist except underground and through
"monitored" outlets (manipulated)….”

Dmitri Orlof, on his site, “Club Orlof” sees, among other things, sophisticated attacks including aerial bombardment of isolated doomsteads attacked for their stored supplies in places like Montana by Russian mafia gangs! Good grief.

Of course, then there is Clif High at Half Past Human and his reportage of predictions based upon his advanced linguistics techniques of searching the world wide web for clues to the collective consciousness of our rather questionable species. His scenarios include much of the above with a lot more emphasis on natural disasters or occurrences of a planetary nature, like pole shifts, tectonic plate splitting, possible coronal mass ejections from the sun, and other life-as-we-know-it ending events in the not very distant future. His advise? Build a boat.

OK, OK, alright already. I get it. We’re doomed. But, is that all there is? Just a non-stop march into the worst possible problems and responses that anyone can imagine? I don’t think so. I respect each of these writes. And, I don’t discount the projections that they envision. But, in terms of my life and the lives of the people that I value (my tribe and community), my experience tells me that something is missing in these projections.

Maybe it’s because I am female. After all, for most of our experience, females of our species have lived and died with very little money, independence, or control over geo-politics, One could argue that collectively, women have been living a “post collapse” lifestyle for a thousand years. I am reminded of the quote from the movie, “Starman.”
“Would you like me to tell you what we find the most beautiful about your species?” the Starman asks of the SETI scientist. “It is that you are at your best when things are the worst.”

Let’s face it, women have made an art form of comfort in the face of brutality, powerlessness, and adversity. So, let’s not panic. Let’s break it down into manageable units, rather than get overwhelmed by the doom-o-sphere all at once. Take it day by day. Take a little time at least to focus on what is beautiful around you. Add to that beauty by making more lovely things – from simple flower arrangements or working with clay or wood or textiles. Look at the wonderful things produced by peasants with more time than money. Nurture other living things – from houseplants to animals and people. Even if you have nothing else, you will still have a lap to crawl up on and arms to embrace those around you. You have your face to smile into the faces of those you meet. You have your sense of humor to bring out a laugh from someone who needs it. You will have the music of your heart to cheer and soothe those around you. We will have our imaginations to create stories to tell to those who need encouragement and inspiration. We will have our gardens and our animals and our friends and our partners to love and to cherish even more each day. We will feed our families as creatively and nutritiously as possible. And, we will continue to add to the happy memories that children will carry throughout their lives.

Those of us who have been preparing are in a position that allows us to be somewhat more centered in the face of economic or resource collapse. Hopefully, we have kicked around these issues enough to have built up a store of emotional stability in the face of circumstances that might lead others to panic. I think it falls to us to lend a hand, lead by example, and help to extend a sense of kindness as well grace in the face of adversity in the coming year.

We can do this.

FINDING IT HARD TO BE JOLLY

Aww yes, the beauty of the cold white snow, the freshess of the air.
hmmm Bah Humbug.

By Murph

Here it is, almost Christmas, should be a holiday for thanksgiving, reinforcing bonds between loved ones, sharing and generally good feelings. Instead, all I can focus on is finishing projects, trying to manage the effects of winter, keeping animals well fed and reasonably comfortable and expressing concern to whoever I can corner for a moment about what appears to be happening to us. Yes, to US, every single non wealthy person on this planet.

I originally was intending to write a post about micro managed societies. You know, where the government minions of the PTB regulate, enforce, and ever demand more compliance of the citizens in every aspect of their lives. Freedom from government intrusion and regulation of our lives? Hah! Whatever remains of that ideology is seemingly long gone.

So here it is, the biggest holiday season for western civilization, Christmas and New Years. From everything I can ferret out of the internet, the tweaking of data by the government minions about the state of the economy appears to be falsely indicating good times are coming. Supposedly, retail sales are up, and yet retail store owners seem to be anxious whether they will survive beyond January of next year. Huge discount prices on most commodities to attract buyers don’t seem to be making any significant progress in volume of sales. Yet, the government stats keep telling us that everything is just fine, the GNP is expanding, jobs are coming back, unemployment is decreasing, and for heavens sake, we even finally got health care reform for which the health insurance boys will profit immensely. Oh yes, housing defaults and foreclosures are on the rise, but Yessiree, the good times with security and prosperity are coming back. So bud, stop your bitching, your just making it tougher for the big boys to loot (that little foreign voice says).

In our neck of the woods, Freeacre and I are being asked about storing food, and how we are doing it. More people are talking about getting gardens going this spring and asking us how we do our gardening. Meanwhile, our county government is trying like hell to figure out how they can shaft us some more. The fight goes on.

Then on Rense site http://www.rense.com/general88/supreme.htm is an article about how the Supreme Court is making it legal to rendition American citizens suspected and declared to be “suspected enemy combatant” by the president. What that means to me is that any citizen that too intently opposes policies and actions of the government can be put in prison and locked up indefinitely.

Then, there is this little tidbit that we sure haven’t heard about on lamestream media;
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-amending-executive-order-12425

And, how’s this for moral entrenchment? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1237470/Priest-advises-congregation-shoplift.html

If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you all to read the Charles Smith publication “Survival +” which can be found here in PDF format. http://www.oftwominds.com/Survival/SP-free.pdf I consider this to be an excellent read and it is only 140 pages. The unabridged version can be ordered from Amazon for those that are interested.

Folks, I am presuming that most who frequent this campfire already know that the data indicates worse times are a comin’ to replace the current bad times. It isn’t written in stone, but all the indicators that I see sure spell doom and gloom on the horizon. Trying to keep some kind of balance today in ones personal life, trying to keep a sense of joy and compassion alive I am finding difficult. Maybe I should quite looking at all of this information if for no other reason than to keep my sense of humor concerning the human antics on this planet. Yet, I am drawn to keep up with what is happening outside of the lamestream news. While I am absolutely certain that some proportion of this information is propaganda or just outright foolishness, sifting through it has become a daily habit.

On the more mundane front, we have been experiencing a rash of ‘thing’ failures. The latest was last night when one of our printers went belly up. I got a message that the components had exceeded the life of the machine and that it would probably be more expensive to repair it than to replace the machine. The silly thing is that the message pointed to the sponge like pads as being the problem. Even if it was replaced, you then have to find/purchase a reset program to make it work again. How’s that for planned obsolescence? This morning I spent nearly an hour finding and downloading the reset software for the printer along with 3 pages of warnings to not use this unless the repair is made. I did it anyway and without the repair, and the printer now is working again. They promised me that I could have drastic ink spills over the area where the printer sets. Lol. A little bit of alcohol on a rag will take care of that if it comes up. I found the sponge they were talking about and may even try to replace it with an Oregon engineering fix. Sigh.

On the printers, notice the price differential between the factory OEM vs refill cartridge replacements? It used to be that Ebay had a dozen refill ink cartridge distributors. Now, one, maybe two at times and within the last year, huge increases in prices of the refill replacements. OEM cartridges are still so expensive that they are hardly worthwhile. I would like to know how that is justified. Those things are dirt cheap to produce. I was told once that the companies making printers sell the machine dirt cheap and make money on the ink cartridges. Amazing if true! I’m almost (but not quite) ready to go back to a pin printer, they still make them you know. Noisy, generally slow, not as neat a print job, and no photo reproduction I think. Sigh. Back to the basics I guess.

I’m not going to be able to complete the mirror refinish jobs on some real pretty grained wood bowls for Freeacre for Christmas. Not going to get the mirror refinish job done on the rifle gun stock either. Oh well, such is the holiday life.

Want to express a hope for the future and all of you who frequent this campfire have a pleasant and rewarding Christmas and New Year celebration.

Tis the Season

by freeacre


Not exactly your Star of Bethlehem….but it may be leading to something new.

Maybe we should call it “the Star of Obama” because nobody knows what it is. The lamestream reports that it was a failed Russian rocket. Yeah, like rockets form a perfect glowing spiral with a blue beam shooting out of it into an illuminated area when they go out of control. Uh huh. A more likely explanation to my mind is that it is a demonstration of the Russian version of the H.A.R.P. project – a facility for which is supposedly centered about ten miles away. Then there is Benjamin Crem jumping in at every opportunity as he has since 1976 asserting that it is yet another sign of the immanent arrival of the new Messiah, Maitreya the Teacher for the New World religion. Let’s see… that would make Maitreya about forty now and still living in London all this time. Not likely. Next we’ll be looking for Son of Maitreya…
At any rate, though, what a perfect image for the times. Cliff, in his latest report from Half Past Human, says that the linguistics on the net identify this time as one of “Secrets Revealed” and whistle-blowing by all sorts of minions as their loyalties disappear along with their paychecks. Supposedly, we are going to get out collective minds blown by the surprising duplicity of our Men in Suits, military, government, church leaders, celebrities, and basically all those cultural icons who hold what is loosely identified as our culture together.
It has already begun. Read Matt Taibbi’s scathing investigative reporting on Goldman Sachs, the financiers on Wall St. and their counterparts in the government. Formerly regarded as The Smartest Men in the Room, the toast of the beautiful and powerful, now they are purchasing guns and ducking the anticipated mob. They are afraid somebody might rearrange their face like Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s was by an angry man in a crowd who broke off his teeth and smashed in Berlusconi’s nose with a statue of some sort.

How the mighty fall. I almost hate to mention Tiger. Personally, I don’t believe that a person’s personal life is anyone else’s business but their own. I had no interest in Bill Clinton’s sex life, and I have none in Tiger Wood’s either. There seems to have been no coercion or underage involvement (quite the contrary), so I would label it None of Our Business. What does interest me, though, is how much play the mainstream is giving it. I wonder if they would have treated Jack Nickolas or Arnold Palmer that way. Oh, I’m sure none of them ever had any affairs…. But, Tiger has become a cultural cornerstone and it does rattle the mental construct to have him fall so ignobly from grace. I’m not sure if this is a case of whistle blowing – or just blowing.

In any case, we have other examples:
"Roche engages in science fraud
Roche claims there are ten studies providing Tamiflu is both safe and effective. According to the company, Tamiflu has all sorts of benefits, including a 61% reduction in hospital admissions by people who catch the flu and then get put on Tamiflu.

The problem with these claims is that they aren't true. They were simply invented by Roche.

A groundbreaking article recently published in the British Medical Journal accuses Roche of misleading governments and physicians over the benefits of Tamiflu. Out of the ten studies cited by Roche, it turns out, only two were ever published in science journals. And where is the original data from those two studies? Lost.

The data has disappeared. Files were discarded. The researcher of one study says he never even saw the data. Roche took care of all that, he explains."

Then there was the story this week that reveals that the stock market was propped up by DRUG MONEY!! Feign shock.
Via: Guardian:
"Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result."

Want more? How about Climategate? Those pesky e-mails pointing to massaging the numbers on global warming that may or may not be the work of the business class influencing the scientists. Or, the scientist who refutes the claims of Al Gore in this piece:
"CLIMATEGATE - Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up
Tags:
• CORPORATE MEDIA
• COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS/PROPAGANDA
• POLITICS/ELECTIONS/CORRUPTION
• SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Oh, yeah, and the expose’ from “Vererans Today” who accuses the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal of treason due to knowingly going to war in the Middle East supposedly to fight Osama bin Laden when they knew he was already dead.
“BIN LADEN NEVER MENTIONED IN McCHRYSTAL REPORT OR OBAMA SPEECH
"HUNT FOR BIN LADEN" A NATIONAL SHAME
By Gordon Duff/STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry's claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie. Now we know that Pappas was correct. The embarassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific. He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn't nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.
However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time? Since we spent 200 million dollars on "special ops" looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that? Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that? Why were tapes brought out, now known to be forged, as legitimate intelligence to sway the disputed 2004 election in the US? This is a criminal act if there ever was one.
In 66 pages, General Stanley McChrystal never mentions Osama bin Laden. Everything is "Mullah Omar"now. In his talk at West Point, President Obama never mentioned Osama bin Laden. Col. Pappas makes it clear, Vice President Cheney let it "out of the bag" long ago. Bin Laden was killed by American troops many many years ago.
America knew Osama bin Laden died December 13, 2001. After that, his use was hardly one to unite America but rather one to divide, scam and play games. With bin Laden gone, we could have started legitimate nation building in Afghanistan instead of the eternal insurgency that we invented ourselves.”

Yeah, I’d say it is prime time for whistle-blowing. In fact, Murph and I just finished reading “The Last Symbol” by Dan Brown. That one just may have more influence than any of the rest of these stories. It will be read by hundreds of thousands and probably seen by millions once they make it into a movie. Like the Da Vinci Code, it is full of secrets and intrigue. Only this time it is based in Washington D.C. and may shake to the core those who believe the 1950’s Disneyland take on what this country is all about.

Oddly, with all this collapse of the paradigm in mind, I find my enthusiasm for the Christmas season renewed. With so much of the banal bullshit falling away as the Mall Rats disappear into debt obscurity, a different sort of Christmas is beginning to emerge. I find myself looking through my belongings for little treasures that I can give away. Why wait until I am dead and the recipients are old to give my stuff to them? I find myself wanting to do it now. I don’t know how many Christmases I have left.

I might just put together a cookie exchange among my friends and neighbors. Gifting homemade cookies, breads, music, movies, books – all sorts of things can be given that are special and don’t depend on feeding the corporate pig. A post collapse Christmas is a Christmas that I can get behind. I intend to devote the next two weeks engaged in activities that bring joy and peace and warmth to those I love and maybe an extra meal or two for the community. No credit cards involved.

2012

...This baby is about twenty miles from our home, and there are about twenty surrounding us that are just like it.


freeacre

Until now, I have hesitated to write seriously about the 2012 prophesies. After all, there are plenty of “real” things going on to be concerned with. No need to clutter the mental landscape with imagined catastrophes that may or may not manifest. I have found it somewhat amusing to make references to “the asteroid hit” that it would take to solve our political problems in Washington. Or, that if we have a gigantic electro-magnetic pulse from the sun that takes down the electric grid, at least we wouldn’t have to listen to Rush Limbaugh any more. I have also taken some wry solace that in the event of the next Great Flood, I have a body type that would be useful as a flotation devise.

I have made light of the 2012 disaster scenarios because to take it seriously is hideously painful, especially if one has young children or grandchildren. It’s bad enough to think of the ramifications of Peak Oil and other resources destroying chances of continuing the fantasy that we can leave a prospering and thriving world for our progeny to inherit. It’s been difficult to swim against the cultural tide, and make plans for localized food production, less reliance on the electrical grid, the obsolescence of many professional careers, and cultivating the ethic that “less is more.” But, now, I guess that I am starting to be ready to actually focus on the issue of genuine global catastrophe, at least briefly.

Last night, I listened to Cliff High’s interview on 2012 with Jeff Rense for the second time. If you go to the Half Past Human site and click on the supplementary information with graphics to explain the dynamics of the sun (http://www.halfpasthuman.com/RadioSpecial.html), you will find a very cogent argument for the end of life as we know it – in about a thousand days. You can also listen to the interview with Cliff on the Rense site. It probably has been archived by now. This information does not include the speculation on Planet X (or Nirimbu), or a large asteroid possibly coming our way from outside our solar system. It also does not deal with the increased threat of collisions and different wave frequency encounters due to entering the galactic center. Those possibilities are pretty hard to figure. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe soon, maybe in 500 years. Whatever… meanwhile, I have other things to do.

But, Cliff’s information is much more immediate and, it seems to me, more plausible. There really is geologic evidence that the magnetic and physical poles of the earth have reversed and changed repeatedly. In fact, they have switched three times in the last eleven thousand years. We can verify that from core samples, of rock and ice. We can study layers of rock and the fossil record. We note references from ancient cultures in Egypt, India, the Maya, the Hopi, the Australian aborigines, the Tibetans, and on and on. Of course, that means that even though the poles have shifted and the continents have moved and the flood waters have swept over vast tracts of land, people did survive. If they hadn’t human beings would not be here today. So, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that because the sun is winding up at different rates at the poles and at the equator of the sun, it stores up huge bunches of energy that is periodically released. And, the releases can be calculated. And the calculations infer that it will happen once again in 2012. The magnetosphere that usually shields us from solar ejections has been deteriorating for fifty years. It is very weak at this time. The fact that there are no sun spots at all right now seems to indicate that something unusual is going on. The fact that all the planets in our solar system are warming up, indicates that this is a shared event throughout our whole solar system. If the sun does, indeed, spew out some mass corneal ejections, it may or may not be in the direction of the earth. So, it could be relatively mild, or it could be much worse. But, since the magnetic core of the earth will be affected either way, our planet would probably experience a pole shift which would involve massive flooding and tectonic plate shifts. And, then we would see the New North Pole in Minnesota or something and giant oceanic waves extending inland for hundreds of miles, as the Planet hits the re-set button and the magnetosphere is re-charged.

This is not going to be mitigated by trips to Costco to stock up on canned food and toilet paper. Eight-five percent of the human population of the world lives along the coastlines of the continents. So, one has to wonder if that is why the Norwegians have created the Seed Bank that is storing seeds of basically everything in a vault at the edge of the world. Or, maybe why Google is making digital copies of all known books. Or, why there have been rumors of huge underground facilities being built near Denver, Colorado, for years. Or, why the Vatican built the biggest infra-red telescope in Arizona several years ago to study the sun… Somebody knows something, but they ain’t telling us.

This is unacceptable to me. After all, we may have only three precious years left. We ought to be free to decide how we want to spend them. Those of us who live at sea level might decide to move inland to higher ground, for openers. Or, we may decide to get a house boat and stock it with supplies. Or, we may decide to spend the next three years visiting the places we have always wanted to go. Or, we may want to stop putting off sharing the secrets of our heart with someone that we secretly love. We might want to retire. We might want to learn to tango. Hell, I don’t know. There are millions of things that people might want to do differently if they knew that a planetary disaster is on the way in the near future. At least get the kids that dog they’ve been wanting – and be the most excellent parent and lover you are capable of being starting right now.

One thing regular people may not want to do is spend the rest of their lives working in pointless jobs, living in debt servitude, or going to war for some dumbass reason. Maybe that’s why the overlords are not letting the cat out of the bag. Maybe they just don’t want the slaves walking away from the plantation.

But, what if they put a few extra zeros on everybody’s bank balance, and told everybody to go out and Be All That You Can Be? I mean, hell, they just did it for Wall St. Why not the rest of us? Ok, it’s not sustainable, but hey, if the fucking sun is going whack in three years, what’s the damn difference? Why not do some things that are radically excellent?



...what do you think? Is Hot Springs Wizard looking into the distance, or into the future?